Build it in stages, priced one stage ahead
From an idea, or from a project that stalled. Priced one stage ahead and paid per stage, and you own everything built so far if you stop after any of them.
$3k – $8k per stage, priced one stage ahead
Why not one price for the whole thing
Because nobody can give one honestly. A quote for a whole product is a guess about work nobody has done yet, and it is wrong in one of two directions: padded enough to be safe, or low enough to win and then renegotiated once you are committed.
Staging removes the guess. The next stage is small enough to price accurately, and you decide whether there is one after seeing the last one work.
How a stage works
- A call and a written scope. Before any code, what is being built and what "done" means are written down, in your words, and agreed.
- One fixed price for that stage, agreed before it starts.
- It lands as something you can open and use — not a three-month silence ending in a demo.
- The code, the infrastructure, the domains and the documentation are handed over as we go, never held.
- Then you decide whether there is a next stage. Stopping is a normal outcome, not a failure, and it costs you nothing extra.
What a first stage usually is
The thinnest version that proves the thing works end to end for one real case — ugly in places, hardcoded in places, and genuinely usable. Not a design system, not an admin panel, not five screens of settings.
This is a lesson paid for rather than a preference: it is entirely possible to finish a beautiful interface, a landing page and an admin area, and still have a product that cannot do the one thing it exists to do. Engine first, paint second.
Price
Most first working versions land between $3,000 and $8,000. Bigger products carry on in stages of the same size — the number does not balloon because the product is large, there are simply more stages, and you approve each one.
Questions people ask first
Can you pick up a project someone else started?
Often, yes. It starts with reading what exists — a Production check, or a smaller version of one if the code is not live yet — because a quote for changing unfamiliar code without reading it is not a quote.
What if I stop after the first stage?
You keep everything built, running, in your accounts, with the documentation. There is no final payment that unlocks anything and nothing is held hostage.
Who owns the code?
You do, from the first commit. It is in your repository, on your infrastructure, under your domain.
How many projects do you take at once?
One build at a time, with support work alongside it. That is the honest capacity of one person, and it is why the queue is sometimes a real answer rather than a sales tactic.
Ask about this A written answer within one working day. Sending it commits you to nothing.
The rest of what we do
- Production check — It works. People are using it. And nobody has ever checked what happens when it does not — when the database f…
- Make it production-ready — For something that was built quickly and now has people depending on it. One fixed number, agreed before any w…
- Keep it running — The part nobody wants to own. Your app is live and someone has to notice when it stops, renew the things that …
- The checklist — This is the list we work through on a paid check, published because most of it you can do yourself in an after…
- Our own products — what we build for ourselves, and run.